The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp. Sarra Manning

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      Becky noted the blush, which highlighted Jos’s terracotta face. It seemed to Jos that she could see deep into his soul and evidently what she found wasn’t at all repulsive to her, because she stepped forward and suddenly threw her arms around him.

      There was so much softness pressed against Jos that he hardly knew what to do with himself but all too soon, it was gone. Becky stepped back, hands to her own cheeks, as if she were blushing too, though her blush owed more to the Benefit cheek tint she’d taken from Amelia’s make-up bag that morning. The last thing that Amelia needed was blusher so really Becky had been doing her a favour.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised to Jos, who was staring at her like a cartoon character who’d just had an anvil dropped on his head. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I’m not normally a hugger, am I, Emmy?’

      ‘Becky’s mother died very young so she has cuddle deficiency syndrome,’ Amelia said, even though Becky had told her that in the strictest confidence in the Big Brother house as eighty cameras filmed their every move.

      ‘But as soon as I saw you, I wanted to hug you,’ Becky said, shrugging helplessly. ‘I’ve behaved like a total idiot, haven’t I?’

      ‘No, no! Not at all. I’m very honoured to have been, er, hugged. You’re a very good hugger. It was a good hug. Best hug I’ve had in a long time.’ Jos held up his hand in despair. ‘Hug. Never realised what a strange word it is before. Hug.’

      ‘A very strange word,’ Becky agreed. ‘But such a nice thing to do.’ She turned to Amelia who had her hands clasped to her chest, her mouth wide in wordless delight that the first meeting of her beloved brother and her BFF had gone far better than she could ever have hoped for. ‘Emmy, do you think you might hug Gorgeous George when you see him again?’

      ‘Gorgeous George? Hug him?’ Jos echoed. His massive chest shook with mirth at the idea. ‘I’d love to see his face if you did, Emmy.’

      Jos’s laugh was infectious. Deep, braying and loud, like the mating cry of an amorous water buffalo. Becky couldn’t help but laugh at the sound of it. Amelia pouted but she could never stay angry for very long and also George would be very surprised if she did suddenly hug him, so she ended up giggling too.

      When Amelia saw George Wylie later that night, it was true that she felt a strong impulse to hug him. But what she secretly wished was that George would be so overcome by the sight of her that he’d be the one to stride over and take her in his arms, kiss her on the forehead and murmur throatily, ‘I’ve missed you, Emmy. Missed you more than I can say.’

      It wasn’t to be. Instead, George slightly inclined his head when Amelia waved frantically at him from across the room, then went back to talking to his friends.

      ‘He’ll probably come over in a bit,’ she said to Becky who had wanted Gorgeous George pointed out to her as soon as Amelia clapped eyes on him. ‘He looks quite busy.’

      ‘And then you’ll be too busy to talk to him,’ Becky said firmly, because although she was many things, most of them not at all good, in times of adversity she could be a great comfort. ‘After all, this is your party.’

      The party was being thrown by Mr and Mrs Sedley in Amelia’s honour, less because she was the winner of a ghastly, low-rent, reality-TV show and more because she was their doted-on only daughter who’d soon be leaving London to return to Durham University for her final year where she might actually scrape through her degree in Art History with a 2.2.

      An army of flunkies had spent most of the day transforming a restaurant in Chelsea into a distressed fairy grotto. There was ivy and other trailing green plants liberally strewn about, along with hundreds upon hundreds of tealights in glass holders. Adorning the rooftop bar was yet more artfully scattered foliage and paper lanterns, and it was there that George Wylie didn’t quite cut Amelia but made it clear that she could wait.

      Amelia was very good at waiting for George. It was a running joke between their two families, that when Amelia Charlotte Louise Sedley was born, she’d marry George Wylie, eldest son of Sir John and Lavinia Wylie. Sir John’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather had been a self-made man who made his money in the slave trade and bought his baronetcy, a fact which never failed to enrage his great-great-great-great-great grandson who longed to be aristocracy rather than merely landed gentry. The family fortune, built on the backs of men, women and children torn from their homes, had all but gone, most of it sunk into an ancestral pile that had almost killed Sir John’s father when a piece of decayed ornamental masonry had fallen inches away from him.

      Sir John had had to do the unthinkable and restore the family’s failing fortunes by going into trade.

      Trade had been very good to the Wylies, as had Mr Sedley, who’d initially provided capital and investment advice to young Sir John. Now, some thirty years later, George would never have to work a day in his life and could pootle about the estate killing any poor beast that flew across his land, scampered through his forests or swam in his streams.

      However, George wasn’t content with a life of leisure. His years at Eton, then at Oxford (where he’d been a member of an infamous drinking club whose membership initiation involved setting a tramp on fire), were the perfect training for a bright young man from a good family who wanted to go into politics.

      George currently worked at a right-wing think-tank while he and his backers waited for a safe Conservative seat to fall vacant. There was no rush. George wasn’t even thirty, though just as Amelia yearned for him, he yearned to make the Evening Standard ‘Thirty Power Players Under the Age of Thirty’ list.

      In good time, Mr Sedley would make the perfect, political father-in-law, happy to bankroll his son-in-law’s campaigns with his many millions of pounds, but for now, Amelia held very little interest for him. George watched her visibly droop in the face of his casual indifference. She was easily one of the silliest girls he had ever met so he was quite happy to bide his time. He’d wait for Amelia to finish university and have her heart broken by someone who’d make George seem like quite the white knight when he finally made his move.

      Her friend, on the other hand, wasn’t the sort of girl a man waited for. She was strictly right here, right now, don’t let the door catch you on your pretty little arse when you leave. George would swear on a thousand bibles that he didn’t watch reality TV but he’d somehow seen enough of Big Brother to get the measure of Amelia’s new friend.

      The calculating glint in her downcast eyes. The steely determination behind that quivering bottom lip. Though she had a cracking pair of tits, he’d say that for her.

      George smiled to himself, and, catching sight of his reflection in the mirrored wall behind the bar, couldn’t help but admire the jut of his own cheekbones. As he did, he caught the gaze of Amelia’s little friend, who had her eye fixed keenly on him. As if it were she who had his measure and not the other way round.

      ‘So what do you think of George?’ whispered Emmy, noticing Becky’s intent focus on her one true love.

      ‘You can do much better than him,’ Becky said to Amelia who immediately gasped in disbelief that anyone could find fault with George Wylie.

      ‘I couldn’t,’ Amelia declared. ‘He’s so handsome.’

      Handsome was pushing it. George had a pale, interesting face, which reflected centuries of good breeding with the odd exotic import to keep the family line free СКАЧАТЬ